Polymer Vision's Readius rollable display gets face time

Talk about a long time coming, as what is now Polymer Vision has seemed to finally put all the pieces together and produce an actual working product from the idea envisioned by Philips around two years ago. We knew the spinoff was looking to commercialize the product later this year, but after nearly 24 months of coming up empty, a bit of understandable skepticism begins to seep through. Nevertheless, the firm's rollable, pocket-friendly "Cellular-Book" was out and showing its stuff at 3GSM, proving that there's at least something there to put on store shelves. Although the unit on display was indeed a standalone device -- sporting 16 shades of grey, USB, "10-days" of battery life, 4GB of internal storage, and GPRS, EDGE, and DVB-H connectivity just like we'd heard -- Polymer Vision is actually hoping to integrate its e-paper technology into mobile handset displays in the near future. Sadly, there still didn't seem to be any hints of a release date for the nifty pocket reader, but be sure to click on through for the very long awaited pictures of the Readius in action.

[Via Slashdot]

[Tony Bowman @ Feb 19th 2007 11:01AM]

that's hot shit right there.

[John Doe @ Feb 19th 2007 11:02AM]

Eugh! That display. Flashbacks to my Cassiopeia E-11 during the days of the Palm sized PC. I can't go back to grayscale no matter how cool the tech is.

[Bad Beaver @ Feb 19th 2007 11:27AM]

The grayscale aspect is indeed a problem for anything that is not "just" text. I am not talking 32bit HD video, but a few colors would truly boost usability. Also, this particular unit seems already on the brink of being too small. With e-paper, I want to see as little need for scrolling and sideflipping as possible. Which is another reason I do not own an iRex Illiad yet, and that one even has a touchscreen. The screens are still too small and too slow.
I do like how the Readius takes care of the inherent problems of "slateness" and screen-damage though. Very promising. By generation 2 or 3 it will really take off.

[SporkRocker @ Feb 19th 2007 11:49AM]

4gb hd? I doubt that would ever be filled with txt documents, unless they don't ever move things to their laptop/desktops. Also 4gb for only a gray scale machine? Bit much? Yea.

Although I would get one of these if its around 80 or less to read some ebooks on.

[ercus @ Feb 19th 2007 11:54AM]

The Readius cell-book should be available from TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile - they codeveloped it) by the end of 2007 and after in other countries. The initial price should be around 600 euro. You can find more info and links to photos and movies at this page of MobilRead.com:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=119

Cheers
Erwin

[JohnathonB @ Feb 19th 2007 4:59PM]

This version must not be finished, as it displays that the person is currently reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone", when JK Rowling has forbidden anyone from publishing Harry Potter as an Ebook. Other than that, looks awesome!

[ercus @ Feb 19th 2007 12:03PM]

BTW: Please note that one of the ebooks displayed on the screen in the first photo of this article is "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone". JK Rowling was and is against releasing the HP books in ebook format for - between other luddite considerations of her - declared fear of piracy. Now THIS is a really good encouragement to do it! :D

Or a good publicity stunt from PolymerVision.

Or JKR changed his mind very recently...

Cheers
Erwin

[anonymous @ Feb 19th 2007 5:46PM]

or someone got ahold of a scanned copy of the book that I'm sure is floating the internet.

[K.R @ Feb 19th 2007 12:57PM]

As soon as they bring it to Canada.... and I ever get the money for it ( $600 Euro, thats about $800-$900 Canadian!!) That thing is so awesome looking, hopefully it doesn't land flat on its face like the Sony attempt at Ebooks.

[SjG @ Feb 19th 2007 1:55PM]

ercus - uh, if you look, it's displaying some kind of a blog. That title is "Now reading: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

There's a huge wealth of public domain literature available. Check out Project Gutenberg. I've been reading eBooks for years and years, and have never needed to buy a text, much less pirate one.

The amount of quality literature that's freely available is staggering. I've read the classics of Western culture, as well as translated classics from China, India, Japan, and Persia.

[Jeff Lewis @ Feb 19th 2007 2:03PM]

First off - to the people complaining about lack of colour - it's a ebook reader, not a PDA or PMP. Yes, colour would help, but it's just not a necessity for a book/text reader - at least not in the first try at it.

However, that being said... a 600 euro ebook reader??? Yes, it's cool. Yes, it's compact. But you can get an ASUS R2H UMPC here in Canada for $1000 and as of today, 600 euro = CDN$916.

Sooo... either a cute, but relatively limited function toy... or a full function computer with 60GB HD for just $80 more. True, the UMPC is larger and heavier - and it's only got a 3 hr battery life (without the extended battery), but at least you can DO things with it.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

This needs to be in the under 150 euro mark to be a real hit.

[SakuraUK @ Feb 20th 2007 12:38PM]

By the looks of it you may be able to play audio as well *Points to the 'Audio' bit under books* Hence the 4Gb of storage?

[Mike @ Feb 20th 2007 5:23AM]

If it was a real HP ebook then the title would probably be spelled correctly (with an apostrophe in Sorcerer's) and correct capitalization.

It all looks like a badly edited mockup.

[James @ Feb 20th 2007 5:00PM]

I wonder if the screen can suffer from some sort of metal fatigue. You know, when you bend something back and forth a bunch of times (like a spoon) and it snaps where the bend is?

[Randavance @ Feb 20th 2007 5:05PM]

I want it. Depending on what the price range is I might get one the day it comes out. From there I write up a simple BASH script using "links" or a command line RSS reader to output to a text file and upload my daily news to read on the bus every day. Mind you I could do this with my PDA just as easily, but whats the fun in that?

[Carl @ Mar 24th 2007 12:11AM]

Why does this device not have Wi-Fi? That is frustrating. It is not a phone, why would it only use GPRS and EDGE?

[Greg @ May 18th 2007 9:24AM]

The screen uses a technology called e-ink, which floats pigment to the surface of tiny capsules to produce black and white text or images in 14 shades of grey. Adding red, green, and blue capsules will give the device a color screen by 2009. Polymer Vision expects to have a display that will refresh fast enough to handle web page scrolling and basic video by 2010. With a 4GB storage capacity the Readius can store hundreds of books, magazines, and songs. The Readius will debut in Italy later this year but talks are underway to bring it to the U.S.